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Sheila Keen ‘too sweet’ to kill rival; was married to ex-Klansman

Editor’s note: This story was originally published on Nov. 11, 1990. On Tuesday, Sheila Keen Warren was arrested in Washington County, Va. in connection to the death of Marlene Warren in 1990.

About two years ago, Sheila Keen walked into Paul's Parts and Equipment in Pahokee wearing a clown costume.

An employee at the shop, where Keen was a regular customer, said she had dressed that way to entertain her infant son and other children.

The lingering question today, more than five months after Marlene Warren of Wellington was fatally shot by a clown bearing flowers, is whether Keen donned a clown costume again May 26 and shot Warren as she answered her door.

Keen, 27, became a focus of the probe after police interviewed witnesses and found evidence linking her to the clown costume, red and white carnations left at the scene, the alleged getaway car and the dead woman's husband. Police, who questioned Keen, have yet to charge anybody with the murder. Prosecutors in West Palm Beach said two weeks ago the person who murdered Marlene Warren is a woman but refused to elaborate.

Friends and relatives who have known Keen in Indiantown, Pahokee and Loxahatchee are stunned that she has been connected to the crime.

"She's too sweet a person for this to happen," said Raymie Sheltra, a cousin of Keen's in Indiantown.

But some say her relationship with a man convicted of drug trafficking might have changed the Glades girl they knew.

The former Sheila Sheltra had wealthy tastes and a number of boyfriends before she married Richard Keen and entered the thorny business of repossessing cars, friends said.

Richard and Sheila Keen picked up the cars of people who missed payments for Michael Warren, Marlene's husband. Michael Warren owns a car dealership and car rental agency in West Palm Beach.

Richard Keen, 46, told police in May that he heard his estranged wife and Warren were having an affair.

Two weeks before the murder, Sheila Keen and Michael Warren stopped having long lunches together. Warren was putting her off, and she "did not appear to like it," according to records of a police interview with an employee.

Sheila Keen could not be reached for comment. Both she and Michael Warren have denied having an affair.

Several relatives declined to discuss the case. "Her folks are pretty shook up about it," said Raymie Sheltra.

Sheila Sheltra grew up as part of a large, close-knit family that moved to Indiantown from Vermont.

The teenage Sheila Sheltra's long brown hair and brown eyes made her popular with boys in Indiantown.

"She was kind of a Crystal Gayle type," said Indiantown's Paula Brady, the wife of a drug trafficker who is serving a 10-year sentence for marijuana smuggling.

Brady said she went to school with Richard Keen.

Harry Hermann, who said he dated Sheila Sheltra, remembers seeing her for the first time with some of her relatives in an Indiantown gas station.

"She was a pretty girl, and she stood out," Hermann said. Friends described Sheila as a generous person. As a teenager, she gave a wedding gift of about $100.

"She didn't even know the people," Hermann said.

Young women were not among Sheila Sheltra's closest friends as a teenager.

"She was more inclined to have male friends than female friends," said Butch Dunaway, who lived in Indiantown and dated Sheltra.

Several friends said the closest woman to Sheila Sheltra was her mother. The two could be spotted together often in Indiantown.

"She was pretty much into helping her mom and dad at home," Raymie Sheltra said.

After attending schools in LaBelle from 1969 to 1979, Sheila Sheltra went to Martin County High School for her sophomore and junior years.

An average student, Sheltra did not attend school her senior year but enrolled in adult education in Indiantown.

School officials could not find records showing she had graduated, but she is pictured among seniors in the 1981 Martin County High School yearbook.

A cousin of Sheila's in Indiantown was dating Richard Keen when Sheila Sheltra, in her late teens, turned her attention from the boys her own age to Keen, who was in his mid-30s.

"Sheila kind of stole Richard away from her cousin," Brady said.

Though 20 years apart, Sheltra and Richard Keen shared a taste for the good life.

"She liked to live rich," Hermann said. "She wore fine clothes, and she drove around in a big Lincoln Continental from the time she could drive." Of Richard Keen, Hermann said: "Money was one of his gods."

Keen, nicknamed "Spud," was "a bad influence on her and he would be on anybody," said Tracey Scott, who dated Sheltra.

Richard Keen grew up making headlines.

A former director of the United Klan of America, Keen at 22 helped organize the presidential campaign of George Wallace in Florida, according to news accounts.

Keen was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Georgia for trafficking in marijuana after a shoot-out with authorities on a rural south Georgia airstrip named Dogpatch.

After Keen and another man were convicted, the two were moved to a jail in another county.

"We didn't feel like we had enough security to keep them in our jail," a Ben Hill County Sheriff's Department spokesman told a Georgia newspaper.

"You don't get the reputation he got from being a good boy and passing out cookies," said a man who knew both Keen and the Sheltras, but wanted to remain anonymous.

Richard Keen could not be reached for comment.

Sheltra's parents were not happy with her relationship with Keen but knew they could do little about it, the man said. "She was pretty headstrong."

While Keen served two years in four jails in Georgia, Sheltra, in her late teens and early 20s, lived close by, said Butch Dunaway, one of Sheila's boyfriends.

She sold watches and other merchandise at flea markets throughout the state to support herself, said an acquaintance.

"She stayed with him just like true blue," Dunaway said.

A year after Richard Keen was paroled, Sheltra had her only documented brush with the law: retail theft in Palm Beach County in November 1984. The merchandise cost $77.60, court records show.

She was not prosecuted but had to pay restitution, records show. No other information is available.

Sheila Sheltra was about six months pregnant when she married Richard Keen with little fanfare in 1987.

The two were wed by a notary public in Palm Bay on May 13, 1987, with no witnesses.

"It wasn't a big wedding," said a female relative in Indiantown.

The couple's son was born in August 1987, and the three lived in a small apartment in the front of a Pahokee trailer park owned by Keen's family.

Rinda Stacey, a trailer park resident, said he remembers Sheila Keen throwing a big party for the baby's first or second birthday.

She said the couple helped run the trailer park and a neighboring used car lot.

"They seemed to work in harmony," she said.

When the couple lived in Pahokee, Sheila Keen would jokingly tell the clerks at Paul's Parts and Equipment not to cheat her on parts, because she knew what they were worth.

"She was kind of a jack of all trades," said Ray Hawk, an employee.

Hawk said Sheila Keen once came into the store wearing a clown costume about two or three years ago.

"I knew she had entertained some of the kids," said Hawk, who couldn't recall other details.

The family moved to a house off a dirt road in Loxahatchee where exotic chow dogs roam their property.

The Keens "treated me like gold," said Leland Wright, a fertilizer salesman who lives in a trailer across the street.

The Keens always seemed to have time for small talk, Wright said. He sold them fertilizer for the trailer park. Richard Keen offered Wright the use of one of the cars if Wright's broke down.

By the beginning of this year, the Keens' relationship appeared to sour. Sheila Keen complained in a petition for injunction against domestic violence in January that Richard grabbed her arm, ripped her bracelets off, pulled her hair and threatened her.

Richard Keen "pulled tight around my neck and said he would kill me if I tried to take our son," Sheila Keen wrote. "He pushed me out of the car and left me in Indiantown without a car, money or anything."

Sheila Keen hasn't lived on Cottontail Drive for months, Wright said. He said the couple's son is staying with Richard Keen. In May, Sheila Keen was living in an apartment in suburban West Palm Beach, police said. Michael Warren was paying Keen's rent, an employee of Warren's dealership told police.

The two were rumored to be having an affair. Sheila Keen met Warren through Richard Keen, said a woman who knows all three.

She said Sheila Keen and Michael Warren were a good match because they're both "wild people."

"They both liked to stay up real late and go repo-ing," the woman said.

The two dined together often, sometimes at Casey's Ocean Cafe on Singer Island. They spent a lot of time together at Calder Race Course in Miami, the woman said.

Residents at Sheila Keen's apartment complex believed Michael Warren and Sheila Keen were married, according to a police report. They said he was there "numerous times during the week and at all hours of the day and night."

"It was no secret they were having an affair," the woman said. "They weren't trying to hide it."

Richard Keen told police he was not upset by rumors of the affair.

"It just seemed to me Richard didn't care that Mike was seeing her," the woman said.

At first, Warren lavished attention on Sheila Keen, the woman said, but she started moving too close to him.

"It seemed like she was stepping into his life and taking over," the woman said.

She started working at Bargain Motors, Warren's car dealership, and telling employees what to do.

Michael Warren grew irritated.

"He was telling employees he wanted to get rid of her" and that she "was acting like his wife," the woman said.

Warren had stopped having long lunches with Sheila Keen in early May. "Michael Warren was putting Sheila off recently, and Sheila Keen did not appear to like it," a Bargain Motors employee told police.

At 6 p.m. on May 24, a woman with long brown hair bought a clown costume, makeup, an orange wig and red clown nose from a store on South Dixie Highway. She requested extra face whitener to ensure "complete facial coverage" and said a woman would be wearing the outfit, the costume shop owner told police. Two days later, a woman with brown hair who was wearing gloves bought flowers and balloons from a Publix store, police said.

Two hours later, Marlene Warren, 40, answered a knock at the door of her home in Wellington's Aero Club section.

A person dressed as a clown and wearing an orange wig, a red nose and white face paint wordlessly offered her a basket of carnations and two silver balloons-- one said "You're The Greatest"-- then shot her in the mouth, according to police reports and Marlene Warren's son.

The assailant fled in a white Chrysler LeBaron convertible, leaving behind the flowers and balloons which matched those bought at Publix.

Sheila Keen was being investigated days after the murder, when the two costume shop clerks tentatively identified her photograph.

Soon after the murder, police linked her with the alleged getaway car.

Keen was working at Bargain Motors April 14, the day that police say Michael Warren and another co-worker stole a white LeBaron convertible.

On May 30, four days after the murder, police recovered the car, which contained hairs "similar in appearance" to hairs taken from Keen's apartment, records show.

Orange fibers, similar to those in the wig purchased before the murder, also were found in the car, police said. A brown paper bag from Publix was found in the trunk.

Sheila Keen denied to police having a clown suit or shopping in Publix that day. She told police she was looking for cars to repossess in Lake Worth, Boynton Beach and Riviera Beach the day of the murder. But she couldn't provide specifics to police.

A prosecutor two weeks ago said Warren was a suspect in his wife's murder after he was charged with 13 felony counts of racketeering, insurance fraud, operating a chop shop and grand theft.

His bail, initially set at $500,000, was lowered to $250,000, then to $50,000, and Warren was released.

Prosecutors in West Palm Beach said then that the clown in the case was a woman, but refused to elaborate.

Back in Indiantown, friends can't fathom how Sheila Keen, who they remember as a popular, smart girl from a large family, could be connected with such a coldblooded killing.

Said former boyfriend Butch Dunaway: "It's just not Sheila."

The Sheila Sheltra remembered by old boyfriend Harry Hermann liked to hop in his four-wheel-drive truck and drive through the woods and the mud, or sometimes go dancing to country music.